{"id":2471,"slug":"old-absinthe-house-new-orleans-louisiana","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Old Absinthe House is the bar that was the most famous in America — the 1806 building at Bourbon and Bienville where Cayetano Ferrer invented the Absinthe Frappé in 1874 and made the green fairy New Orleans's drink. The marble fountains still drip the water over the sugar.","The legend is documented as legend — the Jackson-Lafitte meeting in the secret second-floor room that never happened, the plaque that got the bar sued by a rival claiming the same legend, and the judge's 1951 ruling that 'legend means nothing more than hearsay.' The bar kept the plaque anyway.","The bar was saved from Prohibition — the original marble bar moved under cover of darkness to a Bourbon Street warehouse rather than be destroyed, returned in 2004 to its home. The file keeps the bar's survival: the 1806 building, the Frappé's invention, the legend that beat the lawsuit, and the bar that Prohibition couldn't kill.","The Old Absinthe House is the archive's bar file — the 1806 building, the 1874 Frappé, the Jackson-Lafitte legend the court ruled was hearsay, and the marble fountains that still drip."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The Old Absinthe House is the archive's legend file — the bar whose legend was litigated, the Frappé it invented, and the 1806 building that survived Prohibition by hiding its bar.","A bar that won a legend lawsuit keeps its plaque — the file's suggestion being that the Absinthe House's hold is the ruling: the judge who called it hearsay, the plaque that stayed anyway, and the bar that was America's most famous."]}],"name":"Old Absinthe House","aliases":[],"type":"BAR","type_label":"Bar","cats":["LOCAL_FOLKLORE","HAUNTED_PLACE","HISTORIC_BUILDING"],"groups":["hauntings","legends","lodging"],"desc":"The 1807 bar where the \"absinthe frappé\" was born—and the marble fountain stayed.","full_desc":"A bar in New Orleans, Louisiana, Old Absinthe House is filed here for what the record attaches to it. The 1807 bar where the \"absinthe frappé\" was born—and the marble fountain stayed. HauntHunt files it with haunted places and local folklore. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, 1 legend and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. It still pours.","address":null,"city":"New Orleans","county":null,"state":"Louisiana","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":30.05342,"lon":-89.934502,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Restaurant/bar","research_notes":"Restaurants/bars batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":1925,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported figures at the bar. Old Absinthe House, a bar in New Orleans, Louisiana, keeps the story on the menu alongside everything else it serves. It circulates as local folklore — the kind communities keep rather than verify. 'Old Absinthe House' carries the account. The figure remains the site's most-repeated sighting.","evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","evidence_label":"Local folklore","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Old Absinthe House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Absinthe_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Established 1807; the absinthe fountain is a documented fixture. The bar in New Orleans, Louisiana has a documented past — this entry belongs to that layer, not the lore. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. Sources including 'Old Absinthe House' carry the record. The date is part of the site's documented spine.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1807","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Old Absinthe House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Absinthe_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Reported figures at the bar. An old bar in New Orleans, Louisiana gives the account a setting with real history behind the bar. Local lore carries the account; no documentation has ever caught up with it. 'Old Absinthe House' carries the account. Legends accrue where records go silent; this one filled the gap and stayed.","earliest":null,"evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","source":{"name":"Old Absinthe House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Absinthe_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site access varies; verify before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Old Absinthe House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Absinthe_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Old Absinthe House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Absinthe_House","desc":"Restaurant","extract":"The Old Absinthe House is a historic building on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Old_Absinthe_House_%2855151882008%29.jpg/960px-Old_Absinthe_House_%2855151882008%29.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":104,"lat":29.955358,"lon":-90.068434},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":0,"sources":1}}